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I cannot confirm that the Monterra works correctly with 3rd party compass apps. I did try a few (only free ones though), but dropped those immediately which included adware. Of the few that remained, and included some sort of bearing indicator, none did work. You _may_ be able to calibrate the compass, and then it _may_ point to north, but at least after some time or some sharp turns of the unit, it begins to slowly deviate from true north and is off again for as much as 45 degrees. I finally sent it to Garmin to have it replaced by a Montana, as explained in the http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=317606 (Garmin Monterra - Not so good first impressions) thread. It's been nearly a week since they have my unit, and I did not see nor hear anything. So be warned, there seems to be no fix, no replacement, no money back.

Yes T stands for a pre-installed recreation map Europe 100'000, it's the same as was on the Monterra. I immediately bought a 32G sd card and installed openstreetmap.org maps on it which gives far more details, at least in my area. Both Monterra and Montana are available with a Swiss topographic map in vector format which is really good but cost some 270 SFr more. I already own this and used it on the GPSmap, Garmin offered to transfer this license to the new device. I asked them to do the same with my other topo maps from Germany, Austria, France. These are on CDROM and I want to download them all to the GPS sd card. If I'd buy a newer topo map it will come on its own sd card which will have to reside in the GPS because of the license. I would not be able to put together maps of different countries on a single sd card and will also have to play disc jockey in the field (a use case is mountainbiking in border regions, remember that Switzerland is about 200 miles across and spans 2 deg latitude, this is only sightly more than the size of a MicroSD card). This is another reason why I doubt whether the Garmin folks ever used and tested their gear outside of a laboratory.

We're not so well-positioned as customers here in switzerland. Meanwhile I did get the offer from garmin.ch to have the Monterra replaced by a Montana 650T, not sure though if they refund the price difference of about 100 SFR. They said that they'll transfer the Map licences to the new device, which sounds good considering the prices in Europe (I got maps from Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and France). I need a new GPS because the satellite receiver from my GPSmap 60CS gave up a month ago.

I have bought a Monterra in Switzerland by mid February 14, unfortunately without reading this thread :-( After upgrading to the latest software with the Garmin Express I still notice and can reproduce all the issues with the compass, such that Geocache navigation is near to impossible. With wifi and backlight turned off the built-in cell lasts for less than 8 hours, such that the unit gives up upon most of my hikes. Because I often turn on then off the screen to save battery life, and the power button being very difficult to press with cold fingers, the display freezes or the unit crashes after a few on-off cycles in short sequence. Thus the tracklog was not complete, and trip data incorrect. This is just a short list of things where the unit is not working according to the specs. Of course I have asked Garmin Support Switzerland to take back this device for a refund, but did not hear a word from them.